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When you read the Reincarnation Compendium page on Persona
Identification, one thing is left out: that past life recall is usually divided into two broad categories: actual past life
recall and archetypal identification. Archetypal identification is not past life recall, but can feel like it, seem like it,
and is at times too close to call.
Archetypal identification is a Jungian concept. Each one of
us identify with archetypes every day. We shape our personas according to the qualities we wish to "borrow" from those we
admire. If we identify with archetypes intensely, we can come to the point of not only identifying with the qualities of the
archetype, but believe that we are the archetype.
Whether we are remembering, or identifying, we need to incorporate
the lessons that we learn from them into our core, present personas, so that the insights we gain from
the past will strengthen who we are now.
Some
previous comments on archetypes:
I feel everyone is drawn to an archetype
of some sort, someone to use as a pattern of own own present identities, even if we do not believe in reincarnation. I absolutely
think that if we cannot remember our true past, we are going to reach for the archetype we most identify with, FIRST. It may
be the most famous person of an age we identify with, it may be the best known character of a fictional novel; it may be,
as the ancients were very prone to do, a favored god or goddess.
These archetypes, I feel, are never fully dimensional,
but they are easy to embrace, because they are so vivid. They may help us add dimension to our own identities, but they remain
for us just a partial idea of what they are.
We can form stories around them, we can pattern our life choices on what we
think of them, but we can never move into their fully dimensional space - we cannot remember it.
They do not
really exist for us.
When we find what truly does exist, it takes some getting used to it. We cannot rush to embrace
something that appears so real for us it seems dangerous. At first, it's like reaching out to check if something might be
just a mirror. And when it turns out to be real: whoosh. Sometimes, I think I have never quite gotten all my breath
back in my lungs.
Backtracking a moment: when I run across someone who seems to be identifying with an archetype, I
don't feel it is something to be challenged; I feel it is part of a growth process. The personal challenge for someone who
does that is to let go when one realizes it is not true. I've been there.
I cannot fault someone for going through
a process I went through myself. I completely identified with the archetype of a holocaust victim up until a few years ago,
and thought that this was one of my past lives, but I could never remember anything that made it all fit. It meant so much
to me: I looked at Jewish people with a sense of connection, I looked at victims of atrocities with a sense of empathy - I
connected to them, and built compassion. Now, I recall, Esther was a child of her Victorian times, and was anti-Semitic, like
so many. I didn't die in the Holocaust, but safe in my English bed in 1944. This attachment I had to a Jewish archetype may
have led me in a wrong direction, but it taught me good lessons as well. It opened up my awareness.
I hope the same
for anyone who goes through the same "delusion..."
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